Hafthor Bjornsson Makes a Blisteringly Fast 400kg X 2 Squat PR

With the requisite powerlifting trinity of screaming, speed metal, and cheering spotters, the Icelandic strongman got under the bar and squatted 400 kilograms (881 pounds) for a double with a belt and knee wraps. Check out the insane speed of the lift in the video below — some are speculating that this could have been a four- or five-rep set.

Personal best Squat 400kg/881lbs 2reps. Very happy with today’s session. This session takes me one step closer to my goal of squatting 455kg/1003lbs raw (wraps) in the coming weeks.

A personal best for the second place finisher in World’s Strongest Man is something that deserves serious respect.

This is a man on a mission. We haven’t seen him PR in a single lift for a while, but last week he was hitting a very fast triple of 350 kilograms (770 pounds). It’s the speed at which he’s making these lifts that makes us pretty sure he has a 455kg squat in his near future.

And while we’re talking about his ability to rep, check out this footage of his twelve-rep set of 700-pound squats from this year’s World’s Strongest Man in Botswana.

He came in second to Eddie Hall, who managed fifteen reps. Bjornsson, of course, came in second to Eddie Hall overall in the competition, and he made it known that he was none too pleased with the result. But it certainly seems to have lit a fire under him, and we think there’s a chance that if not for his loss, he wouldn’t be so determined to close in on the fabled thousand-pound squat. Of course, this is just speculation.

Bjornsson attributes his success in part to his programming, which is designed by the Australian strength coach Sebastian Oreb, who also coaches the kickboxing powerlifter Alex Simon. Here’s to his next PR.

Nick is a content producer and journalist with over seven years’ experience reporting on four continents. His first articles about health were on a cholera outbreak in rural Kenya while he was reporting for a French humanitarian organization. His next writing job was covering the nightlife scene in Shanghai. He’s written on a lot of things.

After Shanghai, he went on to produce a radio documentary about bodybuilding in Australia before finishing his Master’s degrees in Journalism and International Relations and heading to New York City. Here, he’s been writing on health full time for more than five years for outlets like BarBend, Men's Health, VICE, and Popular Science.

No fan of writing in the third person, Nick’s passion for health stems from an interest in self improvement: How do we reach our potential?

Questions like these took him through a lot of different areas of health and fitness like gymnastics, vegetarianism, kettlebell training, fasting, CrossFit, Paleo, and so on, until he realized (or decided) that strength training fit best with the ideas of continuous, measurable self improvement.

At BarBend his writing focuses a little more on nutrition and long-form content with a heaping dose of strength training. His underlying belief is in the middle path: you don’t have to count every calorie and complete every workout in order to benefit from a healthy lifestyle and a stronger body. Plus, big traps are cool.

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